Been saying this for years. I’m supposed to be fine when someone wakes me up on a Saturday morning to shove Jesus up my orifice, or sends my preschooler home from school with bible pamphlets, but if I did that to them with atheism, they’d riot.
And yet somehow they’re being persecuted. Fuck them.
They should. It’s nuts this motherfucker has the influence he does. He’s an actual dipshit who’s only able to do this because he was born into money and failed upwards. He’s a moron with outsized influence. Hold him to account, please.
I’m tired of people making light of this, I’m tired of people being passive about this,
Hey man, so am I. We’re on the same page. I’ve spent the last 10 years trying to get people to take this threat seriously. That’s why I bring up what’s happened in Europe and how the far right has been piloting their ideas there. They’ve been planning this and working out the details for decades, but they’ve also lost during some of that. My point is maybe we can look at those losses and learn some things.
Many people in the US are totally unaware of that history and haven’t seen where they’ve been stomped back down. I’m saying we can look at their losses and learn something. Chest-thumping does nothing. We should be learning.
They’ve got an advantage because whilst most democratic leaders have been trying to govern and deal with crises, they’ve been systematically testing the fences. Like velociraptors, they’ll eat everyone’s faces at the first opportunity.
You’re right – we can’t make light of this or be passive. I’ve been trying to figure out how we can collectively resist for a decade. I didn’t want Biden to step down, and even though I don’t personally like Biden, I never said that because we can’t be divided and he was better than the Nazis on the porch. But now he has and this is where we are.
I’ve been downvoted for years for saying the things you’re saying – again, I don’t get why you’re angry at me. I’ve tried to get people to see the real state of things, and I’ll not stop doing that. All I can do now is convince people to vote, because that’s the only play we have left, but I’d like even more for people to understand the real threat. And I still don’t get why you seem angry at me when we’re on the same side.
It’s pretty naive to think there is any other country on the planet that could cause the world more damage if turned fascist.
I never said that, and I’m confused how you got that from my comment.
In fact, if you look through my history, you’ll see I’ve said if the US goes fascist, that will be a huge problem for the whole world.
I’m not downplaying the threat at all – quite the opposite. We’re on the same side, and I’m not sure why you’re attacking me here.
It’s a bit naive to think Western Europe hasn’t been under attack from the right wing at least as long as the US has. They’ve had wars over it that never really reached US shores, and it never really went away. All of the strategies that have been used in the US were piloted and honed in Europe – look up the activities there by Manafort, Stone, Bannon, etc. all the same names who have been implementing the shit you’re seeing in the US were active in Western and Eastern Europe years before this. It’s been going on there far longer.
It’s amazing to me that people in the US haven’t been paying attention to what’s gone on there and learning from their successes.
Thank you. I’ve been saying this for years now and usually get downvoted for it, which makes me sad – not because I care about downvotes but because so many people seem not to understand that this is 1933 and we need to be all-in against fascism right now.
Biden just stepped down, so it’s even more important that we unite against the threat. I don’t care who’s on the Democrat ticket – whether it’s Kamala or anyone else, even Biden’s bitey dog – this isn’t the time to debate policy. We need to vote and convince everyone who isn’t a fascist to vote against this. If we don’t, they will kill us, and that’s not hyperbole.
Please vote.
The only other option is trump. Are you trying to get people to vote for trump? If so, why?
I don’t disagree. But we’re living in interesting times.
I don’t like most of the people on the ticket I’ll be given in November, but you know what’s objectively worse? Actual fascism. Fascism always ends in genocide, and these white Christian nationalists aren’t even trying to hide it, going mask-off even before they have the power to back it up.
When fascists can be this bold and still keep their seats of power, that’s quite worrying.
As I saw someone say earlier, we’re in democracy triage.
I’d vote for Biden’s corpse before trump or not voting. We must wrest all power from the fascists before we can squabble about who’s more left.
I hope people stop believing the bullshit that’s trying to get progressives to not vote or to vote for 3rd parties. Progressives absolutely can win democrat tickets, and that’s exactly why there’s so much propaganda trying to convince people otherwise. Progressives have a lot of political power right now, and the whole system can swing left if people don’t just give up. Progressives giving up is the only play the right has.
Jpg for photos, png for everything else.
It’s an easy rule of thumb, it hurts that 20 years of repeating it seems to have had zero effect.
Maybe this helps: Jpg fucks up your image, and png doesn’t.
Or: jpg is lossy, png is lossless.
Or: It’s better to save photos as png than cartoons as jpg.
Seriously, I hope some of this breaks through because deep fried images are so fucking unnecessary.
The chicken vs egg question has never been about chronology or science.
It’s been about religion vs science.
Science says the egg came first: something nearly imperceptibly not quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched a chicken. That’s how evolution works, with the egg coming first.
Religion says a god poofed a chicken into existence. The chicken came first, and only ever laid pure chicken eggs. The eggs will forever hatch a chicken and nothing but a chicken.
That’s the chicken vs egg thing. It’s not a puzzle at all, it’s just science vs religion.
e: simplified. I’m too wordy by default.
Organised religion is a cancer of the mind.
Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
Or ‘I dunno what was wrong, but banging it helped’ as ‘percussive maintenance’.
After reading those and other articles, it’s difficult for me to maintain a straight face when people IRL tell me they’re libertarians. The more I’ve looked into it, the more I can’t help but snicker at its mention.
I’ve put Libertarianism on my mental shelf along with Scientology and Moonies. It’s just batshit insane and naive as fuck.
My two favourite articles on libertarian experiments gone horribly wrong:
The Rise and Fall of the “Freest Little City in Texas”: How a Libertarian Experiment in City Government Fell Apart Over Taxes, Debt, and Some Very Angry People
and
The Town That Went Feral: based upon A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz
Some choice quotes:
“This is one of the worst things I’ve ever done,” she said of being mayor. “I’ve never dealt with such angry people. I’m washing my hands of everything. … I’m going to travel. I’m going as far away from Von Ormy as I can.”
Nearly everyone in town has an opinion on who’s to blame. But it’s probably safe to say that the vision of the city’s founder, a libertarian lawyer whose family traces its roots in Von Ormy back six generations, has curdled into something that is part comedy, part tragedy.
…
When a group of libertarians set about scrapping their local government, chaos descended. And then the bears moved in.
One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom.
Both articles are well worth the read.
not wanting to be touched
That was a big one that contributed to my divorce. Even after decades and with the person who was supposed to be my closest relationship, and even after explaining a million times that the worse my autoimmune illness got, the less I wanted to be touched, it was a massive problem.
I still don’t get it, because I’ve never once thought someone else not wanting me to touch them impacted me in any way. I also never feel the need to touch other people. I guess that’s weird.
I never stopped wearing masks since the beginning, and get boosted every time it’s available.
I’ve always taken Covid seriously, same as the flu for which we get yearly boosters.
I’ll always be angry at antivaxxers that this thing that could have been contained like SARS was turned globally endemic because morons refuse to live in reality, so I’ll probably have to mask for the rest of my life (I have autoimmune issues that don’t play nice with Covid and I’d likely die very, very horribly, slowly and painfully drowning alone in an isolation room).
So yeah, I won’t forget who’s fault this is.
Good on you. Thank you for seeing reason. That was objectively awful.